Friday, February 13, 2015

French Conquest of Indochina

France
was one of the greatest powers in the world. Along with its European rivals, it
acquired a huge empire that comprised territories from the Africa to Asia. In
the region of Southeast Asia, France became a major player in its politics
during the 19th century. In competition with Great Britain, it exerted a lot of
effort in order to acquire lands as much as possible. At the end, France
managed to obtain the region known as Indochina. And for the countries, of
Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, it was a start of a half a century of colonization
and exploitation.

But
how France obtained Indochina? What drove the French to take Indochina? What
happened that led fall of its natives in the hands of the French? What effects
became felt after the conquest of Indochina?

France
only started to assert its dominance over Indochina during the 1800’s. Before
then, the only French that settled in the areas of modern day Laos, Cambodia,
and Vietnam or Indochina were the French missionaries. The French missionaries
played a part in the rise of the Nguyen Dynasty in the early 1800’s. The
missionaries’ propagation of the Christian faith then became very active. So
much so that by 1840, the Vietnamese Christians numbered around 500,000. Off
course, Confucian and traditionalist courtiers in the Nguyen capital of Hue
felt anxious, suspicious, and even threatened by the rising number of
Vietnamese Christians. They saw Christianity destroying the traditional
Confucian values of ancestral worship, which also became a top issue of Christians
in East Asia. And so, the Nguyen officials began the persecution of Christians
in Vietnam. On the process of destroying the Christians, the traditionalist
Vietnamese killed numerous French and Spanish priests. France then used this
persecution as a driving force for its intervention and eventual conquest of
Vietnam and its neighboring lands of Laos and Cambodia.

This
intervention in the name of religion a part of the so-called white man’s
burden. In the west, governments used the term civilizing mission or in French,
mission civilisatice, as a pretext for imperialism and colonization. They felt
that they had the responsibility of bringing order, culture, and civilization
to the so-called “heathens” or “barbarians” in faraway lands. However, this
“burden” or “duty” hid the other reasons of imperialism, mainly political and
economic. During the 1840’s, many western nations wanted to access the
lucrative trade with China. Hence, the Portuguese took Macao. Spanish conquered
the Philippines. The Dutch colonized Indonesia. And the British, who already
had the rich lands of India, advanced its territories to Burma and Malayan
Peninsula. France needed a stepping stone or a station in the east in order to
facilitate trade with the Chinese. Other than that, the French industrial
revolution began to take off. Industrialization meant more resources needed and
more markets for selling manufactured goods. Other than economic, politics also
played a role. Having a huge colonial empire brought great prestige to a European
country. It served as a bragging rights in continental affairs of Europe. If
France gained a territory in the East, it would be able to challenge the
veteran of imperialism – Great Britain. Thus, the search for an oriental empire
began. Luckily for France, it found one – in Indochina.

With
an excuse of protecting its missionaries, the French, along with the Spanish,
began operations against the Vietnamese Nguyen Dynasty. The first French
intervention concerning the persecution of Christians happened in 1847. French warships bombarded Da Nang (Tourane) and killed thousands of Vietnamese. But
the French actions in 1847 failed to deter the Nguyen officials from hunting
down Christians. It continued for another decade. Cries for further French
intervention increased over time. By the late 1850’s France began its conquests
of Indochina, starting first with Vietnam. France had already a substantial
naval presence in the Far East due to the upheavals of the Second Opium War
that raged from 1856 to 1860. Some French spared some French units from the
fighting in China and moved them south to Vietnam. And in 1858, known as the
Cochinchina Campaign, French forces under Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly
landed in Da Nang. However, the strength of the Da Nang proved to be strong.
Instead, the French moved south and besieged Saigon, which fell in 1859. Then, it pushed out the Vietnamese in the
neighboring three provinces of the Saigon. The fall of Saigon became the ace of
Admiral Genouilly in order to secure the French ownership of Saigon and three
close provinces. In 1862, the French and Vietnamese Emperor Tu Duc agreed to a treaty
known as the Treaty of Saigon. Under the agreement, Vietnam granted France
control of Saigon and its three neighboring provinces of Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh,
and Dinh Tuong. French became temporarily settled with their territories in
Southern Vietnam, known as Cochinchina.

Meanwhile,
besides Vietnam, France also began to assert its dominance in neighboring Cambodia. At that time, Vietnam and Siam competed with each other for dominance
and influence in Cambodia. The once mighty Khmer Empire became a lowly
tributary state of either the Vietnamese or the Siamese. In 1853, the Cambodian
King Ang Duang wanted to revive the lost glory of the Khmers. With the urging
of the French missionaries, King Ang Duang wrote a friendly as well as
diplomatic letter to France’s Napoleon III, seeking partnership with the
French. In 1856, King Ang Duang sent another letter, this time asking for help
and even protection for their campaign for independence from Vietnam and Siam
and for the rise of Cambodia. The letter then invited the French to go to
Cambodia. Two years later, in 1858, the French arrived to Cambodia via
Cochinchina, during their campaign to subdue the Vietnamese region. In 1860,
King Ang Duang passed away without naming an heir. The timing and the events
could not have been worse. The kingdom underwent a period of internal strife.
The chaos that ensued brought down peace and order. Banditry outside the
capital rose significantly. Catholic missions became favorite targets of the
bandits. Bishop in charge of all Christians in Cambodia, Jean-Claude Miche,
sought French intervention in kingdom. At the same year, France had already
settled in Cochinchina. French forces then moved in to Cambodia easily. Besides
religious reasons, the French also feared Siamese intervention, with British
support, in Cambodia. They did not want to lose the opportunity to gain more
lands, especially those lands near the Mekong River. The Mekong River had been
a target for French intervention in Cochinchina. They believed that the scantly
explored river traversed up to the Central China. Access to Central China meant
more markets for goods and more source of natural resources and exotic and
highly valued oriental goods.

In
1862, Prince Norodom, son of the deceased King Ang Duang, returned to Cambodia
to claim the throne. The Siamese saw Norodom as the new King of Cambodia, and
off course, as a puppet king of the kingdom. To show Norodom than the Siamese
dominate Cambodia, Siamese King Mongkut refused return the royal regalia of
Cambodia to Norodom. Norodom felt insulted and furious. He wanted to avenge
this insult by colluding with the French for their support. Norodom soon
realized that the French and the Siamese competed with each other for influence
and control of him and Cambodia. He exploited it but it proved to be similar to
playing with fire. On August of 1863, to retaliate to the Siamese, he agreed
for the French to gain access to Cambodian ports for trade in exchange of their
protection. Virtually, Cambodia became a French protectorate. However, Norodom
did not wanted to become a pawn of the French. In order to strike a balance, in
December of 1863, he again signed another agreement secretly with Siam seeking
protection. In exchange for protection of Siam, he agreed to be crowned as King
of Cambodia in Bangkok. On March 1864, Siam crowned Norodom as King of Cambodia.
In order to strike a balance with the French. Norodom also agreed to be crowned
once more in Udong in June. In 1867, the Siamese, under the fear of war and its
weakness against the western powers, agreed to drop its claims over all of
Cambodia except the provinces of Siam Reap and Battambang. These two provinces
remained under Siamese hands until 1907, when King Chulalongkorn agreed to drop
the provinces as part of Siam as well. Since then, French had effectively put
Cambodia into its oriental empire with Cochinchina.

In
the 1870’s, France’s aggression in Vietnam ceased temporarily due to the raging
Franco-Prussian War in Europe. The Franco-Prussian War made the French
concentrate its forces back to France. After the war ended, resources had to be
reallocated for reconstruction of the nation. Only in the 1880’s that France
once again began its imperialism in order to revive its lost power and prestige
from its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

Other
developments that developed in the 1880’s included a change in the target of
the France in Indochina. The conquests of the whole Mekong River for access to
Central China had to wait, because Laos, another land that control the Mekong,
remained under strong Siamese control. The French then learned that the Red
River could serve the same purpose. But the Red River laid in Northern Vietnam,
in Tonkin, under the control of the Nguyens. The Nguyen Dynasty, meanwhile,
faced decline. Rebellions and banditry had sprung up across the kingdom. The Black
Army, one of the biggest and strongest rebel groups, proved be a challenge for
Vietnam. It weakened the strength of Vietnam and led to its vulnerability for
French expansion and ambition. In 1882, the French attacked and took Hanoi from
the Nguyen Dynasty under the pretense of protecting it from the Black Army and
attacks of Chinese Pirates. A year later, in 1883, things became even worst for
Vietnam. Emperor Tu Duc passed away without even leaving an heir. Hence,
Vietnam became leaderless. The French then moved in to assert its control over
the French. In 1884, France made the Vietnamese rulers to sign the Treaty of
Patenotre, where France pledge to protect all Vietnamese territories.
Therefore, it made the rest Vietnam, including the Annam and Tonkin region, a
French protectorate. China, however, protest about the French control over
Tonkin, which the Chinese highly influenced the area. The Qing saw it as a
slapped in its imperial prestige. France then defended its position in Tonkin
and waged war against the Chinese. It ended only with the singing of the Treaty
Tianjin where China recognized French control over the whole of Vietnam. In
1887, France showed off its lands in the east with the establishment of the
Indochinese Union made of the French colonies or protectorates of Cochinchina,
Annam, Tonkin, and Cambodia.

But
the conquest of the Indochina did not stop there. In 1893, French pursued the conquest of Laos. Once again, France revived its ambition to take the road to
Central China – Mekong River. Laos bordered with the Mekong and the Kingdom of
Siam. During the 1880’s, Siam tightened its control of Laos by sending troops
to the area. In 1893, Paris sent August Pavie to handle the acquisition of
Laos. France then launched an aggressive campaign to take Laos. Using the
Treaty of Patenotre, the French reasoned that Laos used to be under Vietnam,
hence, they had the obligation to protect it. Siam, however, defended the lands
aggressively. Skirmishes between the Siamese and French raged. One incident
resulted to the death of a French officer. Pavie, who also became the French
minister in Bangkok, Siam, used it as a reason to dispatch French warships to
the mouth of the Chao Phraya River, in a district known as Paknam. King
Chulalongkorn decided to attack the French warships. The French warships, the
Comete and the Inconstant, fought their way into the Chao Phraya and into
Bangkok. There they aimed their guns to the Grand Palace. Pavie then sent an
ultimatum demanding Siam to relinquish its claim over the lands east of the
Mekong River. After serious considerations, Siam signed a treaty with France in
October 1893, giving up their claims to Laos. Laos then became a French
protectorate and incorporated into the Indochinese Union. The final phase of
the conquest of Indochina ended.

After
the conquest of Indochina, the period of colonization under France began. For
decades, France exploited the vast amounts of natural resources of Laos,
Vietnam, and Cambodia. The people of these countries suffered from the colonial
exploitation and abuse. Only after the Second World War that the Vietnamese, Laotians,
and Cambodians, exploited the weakness of the French and began their fight for
independence.